“We ought to stop the Reverend Traherne that’s where it is. He’d talk the head off an elephant. He gets a hold of them, and abuses it. It isn’t right, and it isn’t fair, nor what Mr. Datcherd would like in the Club.”
“Nonsense,” said Eddy. “Mr. Datcherd would be delighted. Mr. Traherne’s a first-rate lecturer, you know; they learn more from him than they do from all the Socialist literature they get out of the library.”
Worse than this, several young men who despised church-going, quite suddenly took to it, bicycling over to the Borough to hear the Reverend Traherne preach. Datcherd had no objection to anyone going to church if from conviction, but this sort of unbalanced, unreasoning yielding to a personal influence he would certainly consider degrading and unworthy of a thinking citizen. Be a man’s convictions what they might, Datcherd held, let them be convictions, based on reason and principle, not incoherent impulses and chance emotions. It was almost certain that he would not have approved of Traherne’s influence over his clubs.
Still less, Pollard thought, would he have approved of Captain Greville’s. Captain Greville was a retired captain, who needs no description here. His mission in life was to talk about the National Service League. Eddy, who, it may be remembered, belonged among other leagues to this, met him somewhere, and requested him to come and address the club on the subject one evening. He did so. He made a very good speech, for thirty-five minutes, which is exactly the right length for this topic. (Some people err, and speak too long, on this as on many other subjects, and miss their goal in consequence.) Captain Greville said, How delightful to strengthen the national fibre and the sense of civic duty by bringing all men into relation with national ideas through personal training during youth; to strengthen the national health by sound physical development and discipline, etcetera; to bring to bear upon the most important business with which a nation can have to deal, namely, National Defence, the knowledge, the interest, and the criticism of the national mind; to safeguard the nation against war by showing that we are prepared for it, and ensure that, should war break out, peace may be speedily re-established; in short, to Organize our Man Power; further, not to be shot in time of invasion for carrying a gun unlawfully, which is a frequent incident (sensation). He said a good deal more, which need not be specified, as it is doubtless familiar to many, and would be unwelcome to others. At the end he said, “Are you Democrats? Then join the League, which advocates the only democratic system of defence. Are you Socialists?” (this was generous, because he disliked Socialists very much) “Then join the League, which aims at a reform strictly in accordance with the principles of co-operative socialism; in fact, many people base their opposition to it on the grounds that it is too socialistic. Finally (he observed), what we want is not a standing army, and not a war—God forbid—but men capable of fighting like men in defence of their wives, their children, and their homes.”
The Club apparently realised suddenly that this was what they did want, and crowded up to sign cards and receive buttons inscribed with the inspiring motto: “The Path of Duty is the Path of Safety.” In short, quite a third of the young men became adherents of the League, encouraged thereto by Eddy, and congratulated by the enthusiastic captain. They were invited to ask questions, so they did. They asked, What about employers chucking a man for good because he had to be away for his four months camp? Answer: This would not happen; force would be exerted over the employer. (Some scepticism, but a general sentiment of approval for this, as for something which would indeed be grand if it could be worked, and which might in itself be worth joining the League for, merely to score off the employer.) Further answer: The late Sir Joseph Whitworth said, “The labour of a man who has gone through a course of military drill is worth eighteen-pence a week more than that of one untrained, as through the training received in military drill men learn ready obedience, attention, and combination, all of which are so necessary in work.” Question: Would they get it? Answer: Get what? Question: The eighteen-pence. Answer: In justice they certainly should. Question: Would employers be forced to give it them? Answer: All these details are left to be worked out later in the Bill. Conclusion: The Bill would not be popular among employers. Further conclusion: Let us join it. Which they did.
Before he departed, Captain Greville said that he was very pleased with the encouraging results of the evening, and he hoped that as many as would be interested would come and see a cinematograph display he was giving in Hackney next week, called “In Time of Invasion.” From that he would venture to say they would learn something of the horrors of unprepared attack. The Club went to that. It was a splendid show, well worth threepence. It abounded in men being found unlawfully with guns and being shot like rabbits; in untrained and incompetent soldiers fleeing from the foe; abandoned mothers defending their cottage homes to the last against a brutal soldiery; corpses of children tossed on pikes to make a Prussian holiday; Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the one saving element in the terrible display of national incompetence, performing marvellous feats of skill and heroism, and dying like flies in discharge of their duties. Afterwards there was a very different series to illustrate the Invasion as it would be had the National Service Act been passed. “The Invaders realise their Mistake,” was inscribed on the preliminary curtain. Well-trained, efficient, and courageous young men then sallied into the field, proud in the possession of fire-arms they had a right to, calm in their perfect training, temerity, and discipline, presenting an unflinching and impregnable front to the cowering foe, who retreated in broken disorder, realising their mistake (cheers). Then on the Finis curtain blazed out the grand moral of it all: “The Path of Duty is the Path of Safety. Keep your homes inviolate by learning to Defend them.” (Renewed cheers, and “God Save the King”).
A very fine show, to which, it may be added, Mr. Sidney Pollard, the Club Secretary, did not go.
It was soon after this that Captain Greville, having been much pleased—very pleased, as he said—by the Lea-side Club, presented its library with a complete set of Kipling. Kipling, since the Kipling period was some years past, was not well known by the Club; appearing among them suddenly, on the top of the Cinema, he made something of a furore. If Mr. Datcherd would get him to write poetry for Further, now, instead of Mr. Henderson and Mr. Raymond, and all the people he did get, that would be something like. Finding Kipling so popular, and yielding to a request, Eddy, who read rather well, gave some Kipling readings, which were much enjoyed by a crowded audience.
“Might as well take them to a music hall at once,” complained Mr. Pollard.
“Would they like it? I will,” returned Eddy, and did so, paying for a dozen boys at the Empire.